I was always rubbish at any kind of sport and I'm totally unfit. Running for the bus, if I absolutely have to, is about my limit, and that will fuck me up for the rest of the day. But here I am…
I'm running, sprinting, and it feels easy.
I don't know what I'm wearing or what the weather's like. None of that seems important. I suppose the wind must be blowing in my hair but, to be honest, I don't really notice. What I do notice is the wind rushing into my open mouth and inflating my lungs. I notice my lungs pushing the air back out through my mouth.
I'm running.
I notice my legs moving me along and my arms pumping, and I notice that the muscles in my mouth are working overtime, every last fucking gorgeous one of them. Each muscle working in harmony with the others. Meshing perfectly with its neighbour. Forcing my lips to part, raising the corners of my mouth up, pushing my tongue out slightly against my top teeth. Making me smile.
I'm running away.
TWENTY-FOUR
It was a narrow green door without a window. Easy to miss between a greengrocer's and a shoe shop in a small street behind the busy Brixton Road. Thorne couldn't see the Volvo anywhere. Maybe there was another way to get in. That would make sense, after all. A back entrance that was easier to carry bodies into unseen. Yes, and maybe he was wrong about the whole thing. Maybe it had just been coincidence that they'd seemed headed for this address and even now as Thorne was standing in the rain, staring at a narrow green door without a window, Bishop was spiriting Anne away to a place where he would never find her.
Was all this just to hurt him?
Thorne put his ear against the door and listened. Not a sound.
He was certain that Bishop had known he was being followed. Thorne had half expected the door to be open. Six inches ajar, tempting him inside. Not a trap, nothing so vulgar.
More like an invitation.
He pressed his hand against the door. It was locked. Back off now and wait for Holland to arrive with troops. It wouldn't be long, presuming those idiots in the Traffic car had done as they'd been told. Get back into his car and sit tight, that would be best.
He put the side of his head to the door again and this time added the heft of his shoulder. Not a violent movement. Just a sustained pressure, using his weight. The door gave as easily as if he'd used a key. There was barely any noise.
Ahead of him, by the light from a shop front opposite, Thorne could see a long straight hallway leading to a staircase that climbed away into darkness. Everything else looked to be on the upper levels, above the greengrocer's. He stepped smartly inside and tried to shut the door behind him. The lock wouldn't catch against the jamb where he'd forced it, so he just pushed it to. Then he turned inside and listened.
Nothing but the sound of his own breathing and the rain outside and the rumble of the traffic from the main road. He felt for a light switch and found one of those press-in jobs designed to save money. He started up the stairs.
The place was messy. Scattered about on the torn stair carpet were various bits of junk mail and unopened letters. He could smell fast food of some kind, Chinese maybe. At the top of the stairs was the kitchen. He found the light switch just as the one on the sirs popped out and the light went off.
It was poky and squalid. The brown vinyl flooring was cracked and greasy, the walls grubby and sweating. Days' worth of used tea-bags squatted in the sink like turds, and a ketchup stain ran down the side of the once white plastic swing-bin. Fast food would certainly be preferable to anything prepared in here.
Thorne backed out of the room. Another half-dozen stairs led up to the second floor. He could see a door ahead of him and two more off to the left. He moved on slowly towards the rooms on the next level, stopping and listening for a few seconds at every step. His doubts outside the front door had given way to a cold, clammy certainty that he was not alone.
It was ending. He could feel it. Somewhere in this building was the wall he would back himself against. Thorne moved forward and upward, knowing he must be getting closer to where Helen Doyle and Leonie Holden were killed. The walls of the hallway were bare and dusty, the paper peeling and dry as dead leaves. The carpet was stained and gritty. He imagined he felt it moving beneath his feet.
This was not a place anyone should be brought to die. The first door on the left opened on to a bathroom no bigger than a large cupboard. Thorne put his head round the door for a few seconds. It was enough. No fripperies. Just grimy white fittings and a bad smell.
Then a bedroom. Maybe a little cleaner but stuffed and cluttered and stinking of stale sweat. There were shoes lined up along a mantelpiece. An ironing-board stood in the corner next to a full-length mirror. Piles of magazines spilled out on to the faded cork floor tiles from beneath the unmade bed and cardboard boxes were piled high against the far wall.
Not in here.
As he stepped back on to the landing he heard a noise from somewhere above him. He froze. The lazy creak of a floorboard underfoot.
Underfoot.
Whether or not he'd heard the noise, Thorne would still have skipped the final room. As he stepped towards it and glanced to his right, he could see the way he needed to go. The stairs leading up to what must be the top floor had been stripped and scrubbed. Each tread, along with the handrail, had been meticulously covered in thick, clear polythene.
Sterile.
Thorne looked up. The stairs climbed steeply, at least twenty feet into what had to be an attic or roof conversion. Straight up and into it. Above him, all he could see was a square of light, a hole in the floor of the room above his head. He weighed it up quickly. He knew that he'd be going in blind. He would be able to see nothing of what was in the room above him until the moment his head came up through the floor.
There was nowhere else to go.
'It always comes down to the final door, Tommy…'
Above his head he heard a floorboard moan quietly. A second later, he heard a small human voice do the same. Anne…
Thorne raised his head and began to climb.
Despite the attack in his flat and the fact that the man had killed at least six women, Thorne didn't think instinctively of Bishop as somebody violent. As he climbed slowly up, one step at a time, towards whatever awaited him in the attic, he never for a second thought it might be something that could hurt him physically. Bishop would have the advantage of surprise and geography, but Thorne guessed that he would not be waiting for him as his head appeared, inch by inch, above the floor of the attic, with a foot drawn back to kick him in the teeth or an iron bar in his hand.
He was nearing the top now. Just a few more feet. He felt no real sense of physical danger and yet he was as frightened as he'd ever been in his life. The last couple of steps.
He was not worried about what he was going to feel… He put his foot on the last tread and pushed his body upwards.
He was terrified of what he was going to see. His head moved up, through the hole and into bright white light. He blinked quickly to adjust then opened his eyes. Thorne's last thought, before his body turned ice cold and he began to shake quietly, was that he'd been right to be afraid.
He hauled himself up on to floor level, like a drowning man clambering aboard a lifeboat full of holes, and stared in disbelief.
White, white walls and smooth, shining floorboards. The light from a row of wall-mounted halogen Damps bounced off the gleaming metal of the sharps bin and the instruments trolley. An elegant chrome mixer tap fed two highly polished white basins. To one side a simple black chair, the only piece of furniture in the room. Everything else, cold and functional. Necessary to the procedure.
